Zelda's Link and Tapion

[majinrod153]

Do you think Tapion's design was influenced by Zelda's Link?

I mean, they both have pointy ears, a sword and an ocarina.

[TripleRach]

Well, Movie 13 was released in 1995, and Ocarina of Time was released in 1998. Although, Link did have an ocarina in A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening, from 1992 and 1993 respectively, but IIRC, it wasn't nearly as significant as the one in OoT in either case.

I suppose it is possible Link influenced Tapion's design, but it seems like a coincidence to me.

[kenisu3000]

Well... hmm. Maybe the character of Link influenced them to design Tapion, but I don't know about his appearance, because when Movie 13 came out, there were only four Zelda games ("The Hyrule Fantasy", "Link's Adventure", "Triforce of the Gods" and "Dreaming Island"), and all of them used the same deisgn for Link - that is, with his nose jutting out comically like Pinnochio's. It was only when Ocarina of Time came out that Link's design changed forever to the serious, sullen-faced Link with the modestly-sized shnoz. And I'm not even going to even touch upon the design that came after that... two words: Wind Waker *shudder*
Of course, that ocarina does make me curious as to whether or not it really is a coincidence. Somebody should make an AMV using shots of Tapion playing his ocarina, and using "Zelda's Lullaby" as the background music

[linkdude20002001]

I think that Tapion was based on Link from "Triforce of the Gods" or "Dreaming Island" because they both have blue ocarinas and swords. I also think that the Link in "Ocarina of Time" is based off of Tapion because the "OoT" Link looks a lot like Tapion.

[kenisu3000]

I think that Tapion was based on Link from "Triforce of the Gods" or "Dreaming Island" because they both have blue ocarinas and swords. I also think that the Link in "Ocarina of Time" is based off of Tapion because the "OoT" Link looks a lot like Tapion.

That did cross my mind. It's very possible there was some influence there, considering how popular DBZ was in Japan, and of course, at the time Movie 13 came out was when Nintendo of Japan would have been in the elementary stages of production of the game, so perhaps some employee, like a programmer or designer, when he got the tiniest shred of free time (they don't get very much free time at all), decided to head to the theater and catch the final DBZ film. And naturally, seeing Tapion's use of the ocarina so much (I didn't realize just how much Tapion played his ocarina until I did my BGM documentation of it - my word, what is it, like eight or nine different times throughout the course of the movie?), the employee would have come up with a connection in his mind between Tapion and Ocarina of Time's Link. It's not too farfetched to suggest that after that, he told some of the game's designers about his ideas in changing Link to resemble Tapion in even only the slightest amount (I once saw a beta video of a battle in Ocarina of Time, and in the very earliest stages of production, Link still had the goofy Pinnochio-nose appearance).

But that's just an educated theory, and goodness knows how far off my guesses usually are from the truth